my mental douche

GLBT

There’s lots of chatter around town questioning Philadelphia’s Pride — and I’ll admit some opinions are founded — but there’s something irksome about being called out nationally for being one of the worst cities for gay Pride.

Gay app Jack’d polled users (aged approximately 18-30) in anticipation of Pride month to determine the best and worst cities in the nation to attend a Pride festival. No surprise, San Francisco topped the list, with Detroit (really?) and Oakland (wha?!) not far behind. San Antonio got the No. 1 slot in the “least fun” category, and Philadelphia comes in at No. 8. (See the full lists below.)

Here are some other statistics from the study:

41% of respondents said they would attend a Pride event in 2014.

Only 2% indicated they would use Pride in 2014 as an opportunity to come out.

17% said they wouldn’t attend Pride because they were concerned about what others might think.

57% said they would celebrate either by watching the city’s main parade or attending a street festival.

59% of respondents planned not to attend an event, while 57% of respondents still claimed that celebrating Pride is important.

Be A Part Of The Movie-Making Process‘Scrooge & Marley’ Debuts Trailer,Launches ‘Christmas in July’ Fundraising Drive

CHICAGO —SAM I Am Films, producers of “Scrooge & Marley,” a modern-day variation on Charles Dickens’ classic holiday story, “A Christmas Carol,” has posted the first trailer of the film, which will be released in December. Acclaimed out actor David Pevsner portrays Ben Scrooge while former SNL star Tim Kazurinsky appears as the Ghost of Jacob Marley.

The trailer kicks off a series of “Christmas in July” fundraising events that will include house parties, a cabaret benefit and an Indiegogo.com online pledge campaign – all designed to raise awareness and excitement about the film’s holiday release and to aid producers of the independent feature in securing additional post production funds.

The trailer will be released on Indiegogo, the film’s website (www.scroogeandmarleymovie.com) and Facebook page, and more photos will be posted on the Facebook page and website in July. The trailer includes the first peek at other notables in the movie—Rusty Schwimmer, Bruce Vilanch, Megan Cavanagh, Ronnie Kroell, David Moretti, Richard Ganoung, and JoJo Baby.

The house parties are being held at private homes with the main public event taking place on Thursday, July 26, 6-9 p.m. at 3160 Cabaret (3160 N. Clark), where several scenes in the movie were shot. Guests will have a chance to win exclusive “Scrooge & Marley” merchandise and will be treated to music from the film performed live by cabaret entertainers Becca Kaufman and Dick O’Day (alter ego of Richard Knight, Jr., co-director and co-writer of the film), who appear in the movie. The trailer and never-before-seen behind-the-scenes photos will also be shown. The event is free, but donations will be requested.

About SCROOGE & MARLEY
“Scrooge & Marley” is a modern-day variation on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Recounted from a gay sensibility, with heart, comedy and music, the magic of Dickens’ timeless tale of a man’s redemption at the holidays—thanks to the help of three ghostly spirits—comes alive from a fresh perspective that will appeal to audiences of every persuasion. The film is based on an original script by Ellen Stoneking, Knight and the late Timothy Imse. It was directed by Knight and Peter Neville. Executive producers of the film are Tracy Baim (“Hannah Free”) and David Strzepek (“Foodgasm”), joined by several co-producers (Knight, Neville, Stoneking, Kroell, and Moretti) and noteworthy crew.

As a Southern Baptist pastor for over 30 years, I have a continuing concern about the unwillingness of many Southern Baptists to recognize the moral example of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels.

A recent resolution of the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in New Orleans as reported by The Tennessean states that gays and lesbians lack the “distinguishing features of classes entitled to special protections.” The resolution goes on to regret that “homosexual rights activists … have misappropriated the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement.”

While civil rights should be everybody’s concern in a civil society of laws, Southern Baptists and other Christians should be morally motivated primarily not by the rhetoric of the civil rights movement, but by the language of the Gospels. Frankly, the fundamental moral question for Christians should be, “What would Jesus do?” For Southern Baptists, questions of law, utility, reasonable duty, social contract or any other theoretical concern should not trump the example of how Jesus lived and related to others.

Historically, Baptists and others have been persecuted for breaking the law. At one time, it was illegal to baptize a person who had already been baptized as an infant. Anabaptists were often killed for doing so, as a matter of fact, often drowned in a cruel mockery of baptism. In colonial America, it was illegal in some places to be a Baptist. Baptists were killed, imprisoned or expelled. Slavery and later segregation laws were certainly legal at some point, but they have always been immoral. Sadly, not enough Baptists broke those laws.

Laws are important, and we should all see that they are just. Laws can be changed; constitutions can be amended. However, what is legal or even constitutional is not always a sufficient guide for people who want to follow the moral example of Jesus, and I should like to think that includes Southern Baptists.

The Gospels contain no evidence that Jesus ever said anything whatsoever about gays and lesbians. He did seem to live a life of love, justice and inclusion. Some might suggest that in this matter, Southern Baptists are just too religious. I suggest, however, that where the welcoming and affirming of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are concerned, Southern Baptists aren’t yet religious enough.

Mark S. Caldwell is a retired pastor of Glendale Baptist Church, Nashville. Since 2005, he has been an adjunct faculty member teaching philosophy at Cumberland University, Lebanon.

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Happy Pride! Every June, many LGBT organizations and aging providers take time to celebrate the history and accomplishments of LGBT older people. Yet, we are keenly aware that many providers are also looking for guidance on how to best work with our diverse populations.

That’s why the National Resource Center on LGBT Aging has developed a Top 10 list for aging service providers to begin creating culturally competent and inclusive services! Suggestions from the list include:

Ask your clients about their sexual orientations and gender identities in a safe & confidential manner.

Train staff in correct pronoun usage for transgender inclusion.

Review your policies and definitions of “family.”

This list is adapted from Inclusive Services for LGBT Older Adults: A Practical Guide to Creating Welcoming Agencies. Download the Top 10 list, or read the full guide!

I’m also pleased to share with you that SAGE, the project lead on the National Resource Center, produced a video highlighting one of its constituents, George Stewart, that is one of six semi-finalists in the White House Champions of Change Video Challenge! CenterLink, a National Resource Center founding partner, is also a semi-finalist in this national contest to highlight LGBT heroes from around the country. Watch the videos and vote for your favorite! You have until midnight on Monday, June 25 to choose. Congratulations all around!

All the best this Pride season,
Hilary Meyer
Director, National Resource Center on LGBT Aging

P.S. The National Resource Center on LGBT Aging is now on Twitter! Follow us here.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL RESOURCE CENTER ON LGBT AGINGThe National Resource Center on LGBT Aging is the country’s first and only technical assistance resource center aimed at improving the quality of services and supports offered to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) older adults. Established in 2010 through a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Resource Center on LGBT Aging provides training, technical assistance and educational resources to aging providers, LGBT organizations and LGBT older adults.

Mister D: Recently Carrie Underwood announced/professes her support of gay marriage and of course the anti-gay backlash has begun! The Advocate magazine has compiled a list of country gay supporters in return. The list of these allies are as follows:

Country Entertainers Who Support LGBT Equality
Find out which country performers have publicly expressed their support for LGBT issues.

Garth Brooks
The musician won a GLAAD Media Award in 1993 for his song “We Shall Be Free,” with lyrics such as “‘Cause we shall be free / When we’re free to love anyone we choose” that helped turn it into an LGBT anthem.

Laura Bell Bundy
The performer, who earned a Tony Award nomination for Broadway’s Legally Blonde, has released two country albums. In 2010 the Kentucky native discussed her relationship with LGBT friends. “Gay people have taught me there there’s really no ‘right’ way to live — it’s all OK,” she said. “That’s helped to bring me to the place I’m at now where I’m not afraid of anything anymore. I’m the most fearless I’ve ever been. It’s interesting for me to be in the country music community — you don’t know how open-minded people are going to be. But I think it’s important to treat people equally, regardless of color, sexual preference, or religion. I love people from the South, and I love traditional values, but I will not repress my love for gay people. It makes me really happy that my music is being marketed to the gay community. It’s like I’m getting my own coming-out party.”

Dixie Chicks
The trio could write a textbook on a backlash from conservative fans following their remarks in 2003 criticizing then-President George W. Bush. In 2010 sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison formed a side project Court Yard Hounds and released “Ain’t No Son,” a song about a young man coming out to his judgmental father.

Robison discussed her inspiration for the song. “I turned the TV on, and it was A&E or one of those documentary kind of shows about these poor teenage kids who are devastated that their parents won’t let ’em stay in the house because they found out they were gay,’ she explained. ‘The lines ‘You ain’t no son to me / Eight pound baby boy I bounced on my knee’ were around from the very beginning. That idea, how can you have kids and love them so much and one day decide not to — it just boggled my mind.”

Wynona Judd
When the powerhouse vocalist was criticized by Christian fans for performing on a gay cruise in 2005, she spoke to The Advocate about the controversy. “Honestly, when that mail started, the first thing [I thought] was, Fear is a terrible thing,” she said. “I’m a Judd, not a judge. My job is to lighten the spirit and love the heck out of people who feel really unloved.”

Toby Keith
Last year the country superstar told CMT Insider that same-sex marriage doesn’t bother him and opponents are wasting money trying to stop it. “That whole gay issue thing, that’s never bothered me,” he said. “I’ve never seen what that affects and why anybody should care — and they never do affect me.”

He added, “First of all, we’re going to stop somebody from getting a marriage license because they’re gay? You won’t stop them from living together, so what have you accomplished? … Wasting a lot of money here and a lot of time that could be spent working on this deficit that we’re under … I never saw the reasoning behind getting in people’s personal lives.”

Martina McBride
In 2009, Out magazine asked McBride if she’d consider telling her conservative fans to be more tolerant of LGBT people. “Honestly, I just have to do what’s right for me, and what I would tell people is what I believe, which is that I feel like tolerance is very important,” she replied. “I have three daughters and that’s what I teach them. I think we should all be tolerant of each other and embrace each other’s strengths and differences and uniqueness and beauty.”

Reba McEntire
In 2009, Out asked the singer-actress about conservative fans who might not support LGBT equality. “I just try not to judge,” she said. “Don’t judge me, and I won’t judge you. And that’s what it says in the Bible — ‘Don’t judge.’ Keep an open mind. That would be my voice. I have gay friends. I have a lot of straight friends. I don’t judge them. I take them for what they are. They’re my friends, and I can’t defend my feelings for them, other than I like ’em.”

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill
In 2010, McGraw visited Grassland Middle School in Tennessee to speak out against bullying after a 13-year-old boy shot himself in the head after antigay bullying went unaddressed at his school. McGraw also appeared in the 2011 film Dirty Girl, a gay-themed comedy from out director Abe Sylvia. Chely Wright revealed that Hill, McGraw’s wife, was one of the few country singers to offer her support for coming out as lesbian.

Lorrie Morgan
On her acclaimed 2004 album Show Me How, Morgan sings against antigay bigotry on the song “Rocks.”

Willie Nelson
Interviewed for a 2010 profile for Parade magazine, Nelson, who contributed the song “He Was a Friend of Mine” to the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack, spoke out for equality. “Rednecks, hippies, misfits — we’re all the same,” he said. “Gay or straight? So what? It doesn’t matter to me. We have to be concerned about other people, regardless. I don’t like seeing anybody treated unfairly. It sticks in my craw. I hold on to the values from my childhood.”

Dolly Parton
The iconic entertainer received an Academy Award nomination for her song “Travelin’ Through,” which she wrote for the 2005 transgender-themed drama TransAmerica.

While being interviewed by Joy Behar for CNN in 2009, Parton, a longtime equality advocate, had this to say about why she’s so accepting of her huge LGBT fan base: “We’re not supposed to try to change people. We should allow people to be who they are and love them for who they are.”

Pressed by Behar to voice support for marriage equality, Parton replied, “I always say, ‘Sure, why can’t they get married? They should suffer like the rest of us do.’”

Rascal Flatts
The band’s “Love Who You Love” is considered an LGBT anthem. While promoting its release singer Gary LeVox discussed the song’s impact. “We actually have some gay people that work with us, and we have a lot of friends that are gay too, and I know that this song has inspired them,” he said. “I know that coming out was tough on their parents and on them and the whole entire family. For a long time, some of them didn’t get to hear ‘I love you’ from their dads or be accepted in that way. It’s helped a lot of our friends.” Bassist Jay DeMarcus added, “We don’t judge anybody’s lives.”

LeAnn Rimes
The sultry vocalist is a longtime equality advocate, having filmed an It Gets Better video, posed for the NOH8 campaign, and performed with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles. “I believe in equality,” Rimes said in a 2010 interview. “Everybody should be treated exactly the same way no matter what their race, no matter what their sexuality.”

Blake Shelton
After a wrist-slapping from GLAAD following a tweet in which he rewrote Shania Twain lyrics in a way that seemed to deride gay men, the country singer and mentor on The Voice apologized.

In a series of tweets, Shelton wrote, “Hey y’all allow me to seriously apologize for the misunderstanding with the whole re-write on the Shania song last night… It honestly wasn’t even meant that way… I now know that their are people out there waiting to jump at everything I say on here or anywhere. But when it comes to gay/lesbian rights or just feelings… I love everybody. So go look for a real villain and leave me out of it!!! @glaad hey I want my fans and @nbcthevoice fans to know that anti-gay and lesbian violence is unacceptable!!!!! Help me!!!! And DM me…”

Taylor Swift
The singer seems to address the antigay bullying epidemic in her Glee-esque video for the song “Mean.” In it, a boy reading a glossy fashion magazine is harassed by a members of the football team, as Swift sings, “You, pickin’ on the weaker man / Someday, I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me / And all you’re ever gonna be is mean.”

Sugarland
In 2009, Jennifer Nettles spoke about the gay fan base of the band, who has performed at numerous Pride events. “I’ve always had a large gay following,” she said. “Particularly in the lesbian community. I am grateful for that … It also means that I’m a cute girl singing a rock song in an alto voice!”

Carrie Underwood
While publicizing her latest album, Blown Away, the Grammy Award-winner was asked her thoughts on LGBT equality. “I definitely think we should all have the right to love, and love publicly, the people that we want to love,” she said, adding, “Our church is gay-friendly,” she says. “Above all, God wanted us to love others. It’s not about setting rules, or [saying] ‘everyone has to be like me.’ No. We’re all different. That’s what makes us special. We have to love each other and get on with each other. It’s not up to me to judge anybody.”

Chely Wright
The singer is regarded as the first major country musician to come out as lesbian. Since coming out, Wright has written a memoir. Like Me; recorded an album, Lifted Off the Ground, and married her girlfriend, Lauren Blitzer. Wish Me Away, a documentary about her decision to come out publicly, is now playing in theaters.

Trisha Yearwood
In 2005, The Advocate asked the singer if she had advice for her gay fans. “My advice would actually be to people who are intolerant — get over it,” Yearwood said. “I can’t imagine living life and not being able to be true to who you are.”

For the Advocates gorgeous photo gallery of the gay suppoters: Click Here

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The Edge
Anti-Gay Christian Writes Book After Living as a Gay Man for a Year
by Jason St. AmandWeb Producer / Staff Writer
Wednesday Jun 20, 2012

Timothy Kurek, 26, called himself a homophobic Christian but decided to see what it was like to live as a gay man for a full year, the New York Daily News reported.

Kurek, who is from Nashville, Tenn., started the experiment in 2009 after growing up in a religious household where he was taught that being gay was a sin. Additionally, Kurek’s friend went through with the lifestyle change after a close family friend came out of the closet.

“She had just come out to her family and been brutally disowned,” Kurek said. “She had been excommunicated from her entire life and two words changed it all. Two simple words. ’I’m gay.’”

Watching his friend’s family turn their backs on her, Kurek began to question his own faith and finally decided to tell his family and friends that he was “gay”.

“My family was very supportive initially,” he told MSNBC. “They treated me with the love and respect I expected. I don’t think they quite knew how to react to having a gay family member, but, you know, that was the religious barrier there that we are all kind of captive to.”

After he “came out,” he stopped hanging out with his religious friends and started to spend time in Nashville’s gay areas. He spent time in gay-friendly bars, coffee shops and bookstores. During that time, he was writing a book about his experiences.

In his book, which is currently untitled, Kurek said that he will explain “how he interacted with the LGBT community, whether anyone could sense he was actually straight, and what his parents said when he admitted to them that he wasn’t really gay, and that his ’coming out’ was only an experiment,” he told the Daily News.

“I will be the first one to say that my experience is severely limited,” he told MSNBC. “There is no way I could possibly understand what it’s like to be actually gay.

“The book itself is not at all about what it is like to be gay, but only about how the label of gay impacted my external life and how those things kind of altered my faith and challenged my beliefs.”

This isn’t the first time someone has chronicled going undercover as a member of a despised group. In 1961, journalist John Howard Griffin published the book “Black Like Me.” The book describes the experiences of Griffin, who is a white man from Dallas, Texas, when he posed as a black man for six-weeks and traveled on Greyhound buses through the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

Griffin launched the experiment in 1959 — a time when race relations were extremely strained and the journalist wanted to show the difficulties black people faced in the South. The book was turned into a movie in 1965 and starred James Whitmore, Sorrell Books and Roscoe Lee Browne.

There was also a 1947 novel by Laura Z. Hobson, which explored the problem of anti-Semitism in America. In Hobson’s novel, called “Gentleman’s Agreement,” Philip Green, a staff writer for a national magazine, is ordered to write a story about anti-Semitism. Green decides to tell people that he is a Jew and then experiences a number of acts of discrimination.

The book, which was a bestseller, was made into a movie and starred Gregory Peck. The film won the 1947 Oscars for Best Film, Supporting Actress (Celeste Holm, as a cynical left-wing magazine editor), and director (Elia Kazan).

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